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Skate-fest just a moneygrab for Civic Center

New Year’s Night my wife and I attended a session of SkateFest at the Savannah Civic Center. Even though I entered with low expectations, I was shocked, appalled and saddened at the Civic Center’s execution of hosting public ice skating.

I’m not even really going to get into the quality of the ice itself. The Civic Center is not an ice arena with the cooling system needed to have real, quality ice.

What I found disturbing was the Civic Center’s shameful moneygrab at the expense of the safety and enjoyment of those on the ice.

When you go skating at the Civic Center there are several signs and announcements made over the loudspeaker informing you that you “Skate At Your Own Risk.” They do this because they know that the occurrence of someone wearing a pair of their rented “ice skates” and managing to not snap an ankle is nothing short of miraculous. These are not ice skates in any way, shape or form. What they rent out are blue plastic boots, more closely resembling ski boots than ice skates, with a narrow strip of metal on the bottom. These “skates” have more of a butter knife than a skate blade on the bottom and come with two plastic snaps, like you’d find a roller blade, rather than laces. As a result, you get people with limited (or no) skating experience who pick out skate sizes too big for their feet (skates should be about a size smaller than your shoe size) which, because plastic straps cannot hold as tight as laces, are too loose and the skater ends up skating on the ice on the insides on his/her feet. It’s just dangerous.

The Civic Center needs to invest in a skate sharpener, train someone to use it and sharpen those things! Then have that person tell people which size skates they need because most people didn’t have a clue. I don’t blame them, they didn’t grow up around the ice. But the power that be at the Civic Center are taking advantage of their ignorance.

Add to that, there were at least 300 people on the ice in this session, 95 percent of whom had little or no skating experience. Of the 5 percent of those who are comfortable on skates, almost all are teenagers who have to show off or play tag and dart in and out of large groups of slow moving skaters.

Yeah, there is a police officer on a loudspeaker who yells out orders from off the ice, but he is not a deterrent. There needs to be Civic Center workers on the ice patrolling the skate sessions who can kick off punks causing trouble and making the situation more dangerous.

Also, guess what happens to a sheet of ice when it has 300 people skating in a circle for 90 minutes. It gets beat up. One should not be able to bend down while skating and pick up enough ice shavings to make a snowball. Just for giggles, about halfway through the session I asked one of the ticket takers (what a group of friendly folks!) if there were any plans to re-surface the ice midway through the session. The woman looked at me as if I had two heads. Of course, what was I thinking? What good could re-surfacing the ice possibly do?

The Civic Center obviously had no plans whatsoever of making Skatefest an enjoyable experience for those who paid $7 for the privilege of skating in circles (Never mind that $7 is a high price for public skating). No, all the Civic Center wanted was to cram as many people as possible who don’t know any better, in inferior skates, onto a sheet of lousy ice which only gets worse as time goes on, so they can make as much money as possible.

Don’t think of me as some scrooge. You won’t find anyone who loves hockey or ice skating as much as I. I just want everyone to be able to have the same experiences on ice as I’ve gotten to enjoy. But the fond memories that come from having fun on the ice cannot be found at SkateFest at the Civic Center as it currently exists.